Android: If you like the way Android 4.1 Jelly Bean lets you view SMS, new emails, and other alerts and interact with them right from the notifications bar, but you're stuck with a pre-Jelly Bean phone, Jelly Bean Notifications can help.

First things first: Jelly Bean Notifications offers a 10-day free trial, but if you like the app and want to keep using it after that, you'll have to shell out $2.50 for a full license. Once installed, Jelly Bean Notifications stylizes all of your system notifications, and lets you connect the app with Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and your favorite RSS feeds for alerts as well. You can tell Jelly Bean Notifications to flash the notifications bar when something comes in, or just flash the left or right side. When a notification comes in, you can pull down the notifications bar to read and respond to SMS messages right there or mark incoming tweets or Facebook messages as read.

Jelly Bean Notifications supports Android 2.2 devices and higher, but the look really fits in with Ice Cream Sandwich. If you like, the app can replace or live next to your existing notifications pane, and keep in mind that the app is still in beta, so new features are on the way (and there may be a few bugs, but when I tested it the app was pretty solid.) It's available now at Google Play.

update: it looks like the developer has pulled the app out of Google Play for the time being. If it re-appears, we'll let you know.